


See The World With Me

by auroreanrave



Category: RED 2 (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Boss/Employee Relationship, F/M, Introspection, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 07:05:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auroreanrave/pseuds/auroreanrave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Serena never imagined her life would be like this. At all. But she can't say she minds really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See The World With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place before and after the events of 'RED 2' and works to expand the relationship between Han and his personal assistant/secretary Serena (who isn't even named in the film, I believe, but thank you IMDB). Some mentions of violence, however vague and un-graphic, but if at all squeamish then do not proceed. Title comes from the Lady Gaga song, 'Gypsy'.

Serena did not see this being her life when she graduated university. She had the whole thing mapped out - a year or two working the bottom rung of secretarial and administrative jobs, getting to climb the corporate ladder with the group of girls she'd befriended in school all helping each other, and then settling down with a cosy middle-class life, kids and a couple of dogs, and a curl of warm, sweet contentment in her belly.

Working with Han is not what she expected at all, but it's better than anything she ever could have dreamed of. A year of unemployment and a meeting in a cafe after being approached later, and Serena had taken her first flight to Rio, her languages prepped, the homophones soft and familiar on her tongue. Arabic, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, she's had to use them all.

Han is kinder to her than everyone else he meets. He talks to her on long flights and asks after her family and one Christmas, she even gets a hamper from Harrods', unsigned and anonymous, but with his name written all over it. She doesn't know why he is much kinder to her.

There are certainly downsides to every job. Getting shot at, for one. When it turns out your employer isn't so much a businessman, as an assassin, the chance of that happening skyrockets astronomically.

It's a cool evening in October in Madrid when she is grabbed off the street. Han is busy with Mr Santiago, when she is punched in the face and awakens in a warehouse, beaten and with a gun in her face.

The men - shaven-headed, tattoos on their arms - demand to know everything she can tell them about Han, but Serena is loyal, stupidly so she will often admit, and keeps silent, even when they start to hurt her some more.

Five minutes later, Han blazes through the doors, bullets and knives and fury in his wake like a hurricane unleashed. Thirty seconds after that, Han is untying her, Serena sagging into his arms until her legs shake off the pins and needles and she can walk on her own.

"I didn't... I didn't tell them..."

"I know. I'm _so_ sorry." He sounds genuinely apologetic, which Serena knows means that she _must_ look bad because Han doesn't apologise to anyone. She's about to question him on it when the effort of walking vaporates from her and she slumps into unconsciousness.

She awakens in a new hotel room, her wounds treated and Han in a chair by the bed, awake but tired, with new lines under his eyes.

"I... I have lied to you about what I do. I am sorry." And then he tells her everything. Han kills people for a living. He's taken down innocent men and generals, priests and tyrants. Serena absorbs it all like a sponge, and then goes back to sleep because her head _hurts_ like a bastard and she needs to think and recover.

The next day she showers and applies arnica lotion over the bruises and dresses carefully and finds Han in the living space of the penthouse suite, eating a salad and reading _The New York Times_. "I'm in." Serena tells him, and if he's surprised, Han doesn't show it; he just pulls out a chair for her and orders her her favourite lunch, before handing her the arts section of his newspaper and telling her they're going to Paris the next day.

Han kisses her after the London incident, when the dust has settled, and he returns, tired and restless and his body rolling in trapped anticipation of _something_. He kisses her in the new plane when they're at thirty thousand feet, and they break the plane in by fucking on the special sofa she had ordered in from a Swedish furniture place he likes. Afterwards he zips up her dress and presses a kiss to the nape of her neck and whispers _jagiya_ while she hands him his tie and returns things in Arabic he can't understand.

It doesn't mean a thing - or it _shouldn't_ \- until their convoy gets hit by Mafia gunfire in Milan and Serena takes a bullet to the shoulder. It's a flesh wound, but it leaves a scar. Serena's already planning the story for when she sees her mum and dad (a bad drunken incident with a broken glass on a beach in Ibiza should cover it), but Han is furious. He gets the guy who did it and makes him scream, and afterwards does the same to Serena, but it's infinitely nicer. It becomes a thing, strange and sharp and sweet, but theirs.

One night Han fucks her in a bedroom overlooking the Shanghai skyline. Even though the neon colours are much more appealing, he never stops looking at her face, his hands bracketing her body. She's not used to being under this kind of scrutiny.

Afterwards, he draws her into his side and whispers things in Korean that are both lewd and sweet. Serena knows he keeps a gun under his pillow and knives along the bed, and that he's peeled a man apart for hurting her. His hands are possessive on her skin, his body still and quiet and hers. Only hers.

She can't see him coming to her home for Christmas, or for them ever having a normal life, but then she's not sure she really wants them to, if there is a 'them' at all. Serena is, for once, content to go with the flow, even if it means danger and death more often than she might like. After all, she has an assassin who tells her she loves her in his sleep, and remembers her lunch orders and gets her little trinkets to send home to her nieces from every place they visit, and has killed people because they hurt her and would slaughter an army if she was in danger. She feels pretty safe. And an ordinary life is something she doesn't want anymore.

(They do have one Christmas with her family, with a minimum amount of knife throwing and fire and her parents and Han mutually charmed by the other. The next one, she promises, can be something with Victoria and a group of corrupt generals in Peru. He agrees and kisses her hard and fast and _just_ how she likes it.)


End file.
